School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Beaminster School?

In 2026/27, Beaminster School offered 120 places and 119 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Dorset actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

0.99

first choices for every place available

119 first preferences for 120 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Beaminster School

There is no published appeal success rate for Beaminster School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Dorset as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Dorset, 40.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 112 of 278 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Dorset.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Dorset ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Beaminster School turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Beaminster School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 0.96 per place 108 first choices 112 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 108 first choices 109 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 104 first choices 106 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 101 first choices 113 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 117 first choices 120 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 96 first choices 103 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 99 first choices 103 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 116 first choices 118 places 2023/24 0.95 per place 81 first choices 85 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 112 first choices 116 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 127 first choices 116 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 119 first choices 120 places
First preferences per place at Beaminster School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 119 first preferences for 120 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Beaminster School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 112 108 108 0.96
2016/17 109 108 108 0.99
2017/18 106 104 104 0.98
2018/19 113 101 100 0.89
2019/20 120 117 117 0.97
2020/21 103 96 96 0.93
2021/22 103 99 99 0.96
2022/23 118 116 113 0.98
2023/24 85 81 81 0.95
2024/25 116 112 112 0.97
2025/26 116 127 114 1.09
2026/27 120 119 119 0.99

Places offered

120

in 2026/27

Named first choice

119

200 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

119 of 119

Offers to families outside the council

40%

48 of 120 offers

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

682

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

602

88.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

80

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

102

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Beaminster School has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Beaminster School reported 80 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.3% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Beaminster School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 760 places 743 on roll 2010/11 769 places 749 on roll 2011/12 769 places 740 on roll 2012/13 793 places 677 on roll 2013/14 793 places 685 on roll 2014/15 793 places 682 on roll 2015/16 793 places 667 on roll 2016/17 793 places 651 on roll 2017/18 793 places 678 on roll 2018/19 863 places 676 on roll 2020/21 784 places 658 on roll 2021/22 784 places 680 on roll 2022/23 784 places 658 on roll 2023/24 784 places 654 on roll 2024/25 784 places 676 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Voluntary controlled school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Dorset

Postcode DT8 3EP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 113884).

Other contested secondary schools in Dorset

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.